Wednesday, January 23, 2013

"Amb. Chas Freeman (ret.) spoke to a Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) forum on U.S. Grand Strategy — or, in his words "Grand Waffle" — in the Middle East on Capitol Hill yesterday and has graciously agreed to have the text posted on Lobe Log. Readers of the blog are already well acquainted with Freeman, a victim for 4 years, when he was appointed to chair the National Intelligence Council (NIC), of a McCarthyite-like campaign driven by many of the same neo-conservatives and Israel lobby activists opposed to Chuck Hagel’s nomination."

ISRAELIS go to the polls today in an election that will likely give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a third term; like the current one, Israel’s next governing coaltion will probably be heavily reliant on right-wingers and religious parties.

Even so, Mr. Obama’s second term could offer a pivotal opportunity to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In his first term, he backed away from the process, figuring that America could mediate only if the parties themselves wanted to make peace — and that new talks were unlikely to be productive.

This is a mistake. The greatest enemy to a two-state solution is the sheer pessimism on both sides. Unless President Obama uses his new mandate to show leadership, the region will have no place for moderates — or for America either.

The rationale for inaction rests on four related assumptions: that strident forces dominate because their ideologies do; that the status quo — demographic trends that would lead to the enfranchisement of occupied Palestinians, a “one-state solution” and the end of Israel as a Jewish democracy — will eventually force Israel to its senses; that the observer-state status secured by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the United Nations is empty because his West Bank government is broke, dysfunctional and lacking in broad support; and that given the strength of the Israeli lobby, Mr. Obama’s hands are tied.

These assumptions seem daunting, but they are misguided. First, while Hamas, the militant Islamists who control Gaza, and Israel’s ultra-rightists, who drive the settlement enterprise, are rising in popularity, the reason is not their ideologies, but young people’s despair over the occupation’s grinding violence.

Last month, a poll by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, based in Washington, found that two-thirds of Israelis would support a two-state deal, but that more than half of even left-of-center Israelis said Mr. Abbas could not reach binding decisions to end the conflict. The same month, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, in Ramallah, found that 52 percent of Palestinians favored a two-state resolution (a drop from three-quarters in 2006, before two Israeli clashes over Gaza). But two-thirds judged the chance of a fully functional Palestinian state in the next five years to be low or nonexistent. In short, moderates on both sides still want peace, but first they need hope.

Second, the status quo is not a path to a one-state solution, but to Bosnian-style ethnic cleansing, which could erupt as quickly as the Gaza fighting did last year and spread to Israeli Arab cities. Right-wing Israelis and Hamas leaders alike are pushing for a cataclysmic fight. Mr. Abbas, whose Fatah party controls the West Bank, has renounced violence, but without signs of a viable diplomatic path he cannot unify his people to support new talks. If his government falls apart, or if the more Palestinian territory is annexed (as right-wing Israeli want), or if the standoff in Gaza leads to an Israeli ground invasion, bloodshed and protests across the Arab world will be inevitable. Such chaos might also provoke missiles from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group based in Lebanon.

Third, the Palestinian state is not a Fatah-imposed fiction, but a path toward economic development, backed by international diplomacy and donations, that most Palestinians want to succeed. It has a $4 billion economy; an expanding network of entrepreneurs and professionals; and a banking system with about $8 billion in deposits. A robust private sector can develop if given a chance.

Fourth, American support need not only mean direct talks. The administration could promote investments in Palestinian education and civil society that do not undermine Israeli security. Mr. Obama could demand that Israel allow Palestinian businesses freer access to talent, suppliers and customers. He could also demand a West Bank-Gaza transportation corridor, to which Israel committed in the 1993 Oslo accords.

America is as much a player as a facilitator. The signal it sends helps determine whether the parties move toward war or peace. The White House, despite its frosty relationship with Mr. Netanyahu, hasn’t set itself up as a worthy mediator by opposing Palestinian membership in the United Nations and vetoing condemnations of settlements.

In nominating Chuck Hagel to lead the Pentagon, Mr. Obama rightly ignored attacks by “pro-Israel” (really pro-Netanyahu) groups. He should appoint a Middle East negotiator trusted by all sides — say, Bill Clinton or Colin L. Powell. He should lead, not thwart, European attempts to make a deal. He has stated that the settlements will lead to Israel’s global isolation; he should make clear that they endanger American interests, too.

Washington has crucial leverage, though this won’t last forever. When it weighs in, it becomes a preoccupying political fact for both sides. If it continues to stand back, hopelessness will win.

Bernard Avishai is an Israeli-American writer in Jerusalem. Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant in Ramallah, the West Bank.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

"For me, the bottom line is this: the cornerstone value of my religious tradition commands me to stand in solidarity with all who are oppressed. It would thus be a profound betrayal of my own Jewish heritage if I consciously choose not to stand with the Palestinian people."

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Like Canada’s First Peoples, the Palestinians’ nationhood cannot be measured in numbers.

By Amira Hass

Jan. 15, 2013

One should not use the phrase "extinct nations" within earshot of indigenous people in Canada. I learned this about a year and a half ago from a French-speaking friend from Quebec with whom I visited the Mohawk village of Kanesatake. In 1990, the village embarked on a struggle to prevent the nearby town of Oka from taking over its lands, including a burial site, to expand the town's golf course. Apparently thanks to the presence of that friend, who had participated in the village's land struggle about 20 years ago, I was not asked to leave after uttering that hurtful phrase.

This is not a question of political correctness or the reading of history but rather of political understanding and choosing a side: for the repressive regime or against it. Three regrettably short weeks of conversations with members of native communities in Canada have reminded me that the reciprocal relations between a group of people and its surroundings is an essence that goes beyond the head count, the number of groups, the level of education, the level of income and the other measurable data the ruling bureaucracy relies on when it imposes its machinations.

In recent months, the First Nations in Canada have been fomenting a popular uprising that dwarfs the measurable data even further. Rights, justice, belonging, caring and historical memory are not arithmetic-dependent. This realization nullifies the traditional definitions of "minority" and "majority." This is especially so since the First Nations' demands are connected to the struggle to save the environment (soil, water and air) from the unrestrained aspirations of capital and the mining industry.

Likewise the Palestinian citizens of Israel, whose memory of being robbed is far fresher, are not a minority. And this is a truth that is above any election campaign. In the entire land, from the sea to the river, they are one people (no more and no less invented and real than other peoples) despite their erasure from public opinion polls and despite the walls and the prohibitions on movement and the categorizations and sub-categorizations the Israeli bureaucracy invents for them.

They are not a minority because they were not a minority before their families' members were expelled in 1948 and because their families' members and their people in exile are still attached to the land some with personal memories and others with memories they inherited along with photographs and land ownership documents. They are not a minority because they have the potential to grow in numbers, and though distinct in culture and history are attached to other peoples in the region especially by bonds of language and religion.

They are not a minority because "minority" is not a neutral term but one that aims at perpetuating inferiority and unequal rights. By arithmetic logic, if the Palestinian citizens of Israel are not a minority, we Jews are not a majority. It is this fear that engenders all the government manipulations: not recognizing Bedouin communities or connecting them to the water grid, blatant discrimination against all Palestinian citizens in the allocation of resources, letting them descend into poverty, passing racist laws and proposals for laws that are even more racist, cutting them off from the rest of the Palestinians who live in the land beyond the 1967 borders and running brainwashing Birthright campaigns for youngsters visiting Israel from the United States.

By non-arithmetic logic, the minority that isn't a minority should understand the majority that isn't a majority and respect its rights, since rights and the connection to a place are not measurable data. It is natural that we, the non-majority, expect our rights to be respected. It is natural that we object to being a tolerated religious non-minority living here by conditional grace and that we expect it to be taken into account that it wasn't just a colonialist ideology but also the Third Reich that brought us here.

But our wishes are meaningless as long as we, the non-majority, are maliciously exploiting our numerical and military superiority. The vision is distant. And in the meantime we must prepare ourselves for more governmental manipulations that will make the tyranny of the non-majority even more sophisticated in the only Jewish democracy in the Middle East.

Sam Bahour - Photo

About Me

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American based in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine and is managing partner of Applied Information Management (AIM), which specializes in business development with a niche focus on start-ups and providing executive counsel.
Bahour was instrumental in the establishment of two publicly traded firms: the Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL) and the Arab Palestinian Shopping Center. He is currently an independent director at the Arab Islamic Bank, advisory board member of the Open Society Foundations’ Arab Regional Office, and completed a full term as a Board of Trustees member and treasurer at Birzeit University. In addition to his presidential appointment to serve as a general assembly member of the Palestine Investment Fund, Palestine’s $1B sovereign wealth fund, Bahour serves in various capacities in several community organizations, including co-founder and chairman of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy, board member of Just Vision in New York, board member and policy adviser at Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and secretariat member of the Palestine Strategy Group.